Youth Groups

The other day, I received an email. This is not, in and of itself, news. Not bragging, but I get upwards of three emails a day. Jealous? But this particular email, the one that brought on this out-of-nowhere blog update, was surprising for a handful of reasons. Firstly, it was from Club Fandango, a cabal of indie promoters in London from whom I’ve not heard in over a decade, since I left the U.K. So it was kind of jarring to see that I’ve suddenly been added to their press list. More significantly, the email itself was to inform me that Ultrasound are playing the Scala in London on October 4th, and did I want to be on the press list. Now, you have to understand: Ultrasound released one insane album in 1999 and then broke up. So this was some unexpected news. Also, the email contained a link to a stream of the band’s new record, ‘Play For Today’, which is out in the U.K. this week. They’re back!

Let’s jump back. In 1997, I bought the band’s debut 7-inch, on Fierce Panda Records. I still have it, and pray that one day it’ll be worth millions. The lead track, ‘Same Band’, was an energetic call-to-arms. Now, I never felt like an outcast or particularly out-of-touch or anything as a high schooler, but this song still really spoke to me. The band was led by a giant man nicknamed Tiny, and they all looked like misfits. It seemed appropriate that their debut should be a rabble-rousing tribute to being an outsider. “We’re in the same band” goes the chorus, but it’s more like a gang. It’s okay, they’re saying. You’re one of us now. 

On the other side of the vinyl, though, was something even better. ‘Floodlit World’ is just effortlessly gorgeous, anthemic and lovely. When bass player Vanessa Best joins in on the chorus it still gives me chills. Here’s a video of the band performing ‘Floodlit World’ on Jools Holland - there’s some seriously crap visual effects going on here.

If the band could put two fantastic songs on their first release, imagine the potential they had for the future. With this in mind, several labels jostled for their signatures, with Nude Records, the home of Suede and, um, Sharkboy, ultimately prevailing. Their first release for Nude was a single called ‘Best Wishes’, which was so-so, but goddamned if its b-side ‘Kurt Russell’ isn’t one of my all-time favourite songs by any band. Again, it has an unimpeachably uplifting and inspiring chorus. He sings “I want to be your hero; Kurt Russell, Eastwood and me” and everyone’s hearts break.

After this came yet another stunner. ‘Stay Young’, which used to open the band’s live shows, was a huge anthem. It’s about being young and having fun. There’s a part near the beginning where he sings “Hey, kids, rock and roll is here, so scream all you like” and then everyone in the crowd would scream. The chorus is massive. This band was on a roll.

The one and only time I saw Ultrasound live was supporting Pulp at Finsbury Park in July 1998. (Also playing: Add N To (X), Bentley Rhythm Ace, Bernard Butler, Catatonia). Ultrasound went on in the glorious early-afternoon sunshine and won most of the crowd over. I remember ‘Stay Young’ being incredible, and being annoyed that they didn’t play ‘Kurt Russell’. They did, however, play another b-side. This one is called ‘Football Meat’, is mental, and the chorus involves yelling the word “Fuckface.”

After that, there was a bit of a gap. They released ‘Floodlit World’ as a single and it followed ‘Stay Young’ into the Top 40. In April 1999, the band’s debut album ‘Everything Picture’ came out, and let’s just say, it was a piece of work. Two discs. The final, title track, lasted almost forty minutes. Not surprisingly, it was - and remains - tough to digest. In addition to the songs with which we were already familiar, there were a couple of new ones to admire. ‘Fame Thing’ addressed celebrity culture and obsession with impressive energy and noisiness…

…while ‘Suckle’ was proggy and meandering with fantastic sweeping guitarwork…

…but for the most part, the album kind of left fans a little cold. Credit the band for making the tripped-out album that they wanted to make, but it wasn’t a particularly fun listen. Mere months after the album’s release, the band called it a day. The keyboard player started a new band, and they released a single which got a decent amount of airplay on XFM.

And then, well, nothing. I didn’t really think of Ultrasound much in the aughts. I might have put ‘Kurt Russell’ on a mixtape or two. But then this email, and this new record, which, in a nice example of circularity, is being put out by Fierce Panda. I’ve not listened all the way through yet, but so far only the opening track, ‘Welfare State’, has really grabbed me. It’s more political than the band used to be, but that’s understandable given the times in which we now live. The transition from verse to chorus is huge. This video edit is a lot shorter than the album version, which has an annoying minute or so of feedback in the middle, suggesting that the band could still do with an editor. I love the lyric “We’ve been away for a while, but we were never in style”.

The other pre-release single is called ‘Beautiful Sadness’ and it might be a grower. Nice video, though.

Ultrasound, then. An insane hodgepodge of various parts that shouldn’t mesh together, and yet somehow they do. Good to have them back - hopefully version 2 will see them become world-conquering megastars and I’ll be to retire on the back of my ‘Same Band’ 7”. 

Hey everyone,

Remember when this used to be an active site, with updates conscientiously posted every Thursday? No, me neither. As I alluded to the last time I wrote in here - I think it was during the Mesozoic Era - I just started a new job. Without wishing to bore anyone with details, I’m the Managing Director of a new not-for-profit legal education startup, and as you may imagine based on the combination of words that I just used, it’s pretty time-intensive. Setting up infrastructure, getting a functional website, raising money from sponsors, keeping an active blog, getting a D-U-N-S number, etc. etc. (If you don’t know what a D-U-N-S number is, I envy you. The process for getting one is an awful pain). 

Around that, plus reading the newest Carlos Ruiz Zafon book, listening to most of the comedy podcasts out there, looking to buy a house, cheering for Team GB, bowling a lifetime-low of 56, making a pretty respectable Chinese dinner, being one of the only people in America who seems to enjoy ‘The Newsroom’, I’ve not really had the time to sit down and write extensively about a band a week as I used to. I wish I could! I’ve got some stories about Soulwax that would make your head explode. (Not true). So here are some bullets about music, both YG-oriented and otherwise.

• Since we last spoke, I’ve seen a few live shows: Beach House, Best Coast and Los Campesinos! The latter are of special significance to both my life in general, and this site in particular. They’re probably my favourite British band currently doing the business, and their newest album ‘Hello Sadness’ is definitely their best yet. If LC! had been around when I was 16, they’d have been my religion, and I’d have already written about them in here a hundred times.
• Blur released a couple of new songs! ‘The Puritan’ doesn’t do a whole lot for me, but ‘Under The Westway’ is gorgeous.
• Recent YG-subjects Ash will be coming to Orlando later this year, supporting Weezer for two nights. I’ll see them at least once, and try and get an interview too. We’ll see how that goes. 
• I saw the LCD Soundsystem documentary. It was great.
• Lately, I’ve been really enjoying the new Passion Pit record ‘Gossamer’, and of course ‘Channel Orange’. That song ‘Pyramids’ is just sensational.
• Finally, enjoy this song. I had forgotten it existed. Two equally insane Welsh bands come together and Wayne Kramer gets a shout out.

As it won’t surprise you to hear, YG updates in the future will be equally sporadic, but I aim to do miscellaneous posts like this every so often to remind you that I’m still alive. I update my Twitter feed with more regularity, because a sentence and a half is a lot less of an undertaking than a thousand words about Hundred Reasons. (Note to self: Future post about Hundred Reasons).

Again, it’s been a busy week, so I’m sorry to say that there’s no new YG update today. I will give you this music video by Welsh rockers The Crocketts, though. They were quite good. 

I was inspired to write about the Northern Irish trio today because, (a) they are currently celebrating their 20th anniversary of existence, and (b) as part of such, my friend Suzi got to sing ‘Oh Yeah’ with them last weekend. Suzi is John’s wife. You know, John, who’s written about Symposium and Kenickie here before. Comedian Josie Long (perhaps you recently heard her on WTF or International Waters?) also sang with Ash, but she’s not (yet?) a friend of Youth Groups, so no embedded video for her. One day, I’ll get Suzi to write about Ash for this site, too, but for now, enjoy this clip of her proudest ever moment. 

Even before the band’s album ‘1977’ shocked everyone by getting to number one, their single ‘Kung Fu’ had already made something of an impact on me. It began with sampled fighting noises, flew by at 100mph, had a gorgeous chorus, and was absolutely the sort of fuzzy, furious-but-tuneful song that a pre-teen like me lived for. And it namechecked Mr. Miyagi and Jackie Chan. 

After that, it was ‘Girl From Mars’, another insanely catchy tune that began quietly and wistfully but took off after fifteen seconds. I hadn’t yet experienced the thrills of falling in love (with a girl from Earth), but the song explained wonderfully those giddy moments, plus the inevitable heartbreak that comes with it. I still don’t know what Henry Winterman cigars are, but I think that’s besides the point. To this day, ‘Girl From Mars’ is one of those perfect little songs that will always remind me of the mid-90s and make me smile. 

A couple of other singles followed, including the aforementioned ‘Oh Yeah’, and the superior ‘Goldfinger’, both of which made the top ten, before ‘1977’ came out. The album was a hit with my circle of friends. Here was a group of dudes (I’m talking about Ash, not us) that were just a few years older than us, who’d put together a simple, uncomplicated, record of perfectly crafted songs that we immediately fell in love with. Nowadays, ‘1977’ feels a little too top-heavy, especially with a one-two-three punch that holds up next to any of my favourite albums. ‘Lose Control’, ‘Goldfinger’, ‘Girl From Mars’. Boom. But nonetheless, it’s a great listen all the way through and as an old and grumpy man, I love listening back to it and jumping up and down. 

After that, the band got a high-profile spot recording the title track to Danny Boyle’s much-anticipated ‘Trainspotting’ follow-up, ‘A Life Less Ordinary’. A lot of people are down on that film, because it’s not as dark and gritty as ‘Trainspotting’ (or ‘Shallow Grave’), but I’ve got a real soft spot for it. Part of that is down to the Ash tune, which already sounds like a band more grown up than the one that made ‘1977’. When they sing “Take me in your arms again”, it’s pretty irresistible. It’s sort of an orphan, as it doesn’t appear on any of their studio albums, so I was always delighted to hear it live. 

After touring their tails off, the band was feeling burned out by the time they came to write their next album. They also added a new band member, Charlotte Hatherley, to play second guitar. The album, ‘Nu-Clear Sounds’, is markedly darker and there’s definitely less of the pop-driven fun that powered ‘1977’. First single ‘Jesus Says’ was pretty good, second single ‘Wild Surf’ wasn’t.

The album had a very mixed reaction, which didn’t do the band dynamics any good.  Here’s what Wikipedia says:

In 1999, Tim Wheeler disappeared for a short while following the commercial and critical failure of Nu-Clear Sounds. He eventually emerged in New York making the self-deprecating, blood, drug and sex fueled video for Numbskull. A note for [manager] Stephen Taverner attached to the video said, “I’ve killed Bambi”.

That controversial ‘Numbskull’ video is pretty hard to find on this internet, but you can watch it here. It won’t let me embed it. Sorry. 

They took a little longer to regroup, clear the cobwebs and plan their next month. The next album was recorded in the garage where their earliest material had come from. In early 2001, we heard their big comeback single ‘Shining Light’. It was upbeat, anthemic, sweet, and indicated that maybe the darkness was behind them. It put Ash back in the top ten. The song is so great, even Annie Lennox has covered it. 

After that came ‘Burn Baby Burn’, another addition to the ever-growing list of all-time classic Ash singles. Beginning with a wave of feedback, then a simple chiming riff, huge drum fill and then every instrument turned up to 12, it’s just perfect. The Ash of old. They’d begin live sets with this and everyone would be delighted. 

The album ‘Free All Angels’ came out in the spring, and put Ash back to #1 on the album charts. There were plenty of great moments on the record - ‘Pacific Palisades’, ‘There’s A Star’, ‘Cherry Bomb’ - but nothing touched the majesty of the opener. I talked before of ‘Girl From Mars’ and its description of young love and all its highs and lows. ‘Walking Barefoot’ opens the album with just Tim Wheeler and a guitar and the sentence “your beauty took my breath away”. A few lines later, Charlotte adds some backing vocals, before the drums thunder in. A huge, huge chorus eventually shows up and this becomes one of the all-time greats. Even the (frankly, bananas) lyric “Anointed by Apollo and his chariot” cannot harm this song. 

I saw the band a couple of times that year. Headlining the second stage at Reading, I found them lacking in personality. For all the great songs, it felt workmanlike and I wasn’t too impressed. Then, I saw them at the Brixton Academy in December 2001, and my review opened like this: 

You know how some people have relatives who are really quite distant, so much so that they’re called “twice removed” or something, a term nobody really understands? And when you see them once every six years, you never recognise them because they’ve changed so much? Tonight, the Ash that play Brixton are so unrecognisable from the Ash that played at this year’s Reading, that you begin to wonder how many times they’ve been removed. Man, they were awesome.

Even though my glasses got trampled, I had a great time. Ash = The kings of 2001.

The next summer, somebody finally wised up to the fact that Ash are a peerless singles band and put out a Greatest Hits album. The artwork made it look like a comic book and I think it even came with a comic book. The compilation, ‘Intergalactic Sonic 7s’, came out just after I left for the U.S., but I was so eager to get a promo copy that I was checking with their press guy at least twice a day, the week before I left, to see if the promos were in yet. Thankfully, it arrived on literally the last day that we got post at our London address. 

The album did come with one new song, which really didn’t do a whole lot for me, but it has a fun video. Andy Dick is in there apparently, as well as people dressed up as the Hives and the White Stripes. 

Then I moved here, and Ash dropped off my radar a bit. Charlotte Hatherley went out with Edgar Wright for a while, so there are a couple of songs from the band’s next album ‘Meltdown’ featured in ‘Shaun of the Dead’. (Also, he directed the charming video for her solo single ‘Bastardo’). While the singles on ‘Meltdown’ were pretty good, especially ‘Orpheus’…

…the song I most latched onto was ‘Out of the Blue’, the greatest song Weezer never wrote. It’s like a European cousin to ‘Surfwax America’, and I put it on many a mixtape that summer. 

I haven’t really kept up with Ash since then. They released another album called ‘Twilight of the Innocents’, and then said goodbye to the traditional distribution system. It was a ballsy move, to stop putting out formal albums anymore, but it seems to have paid off for them. They’ve put out a lot of standalone singles, and collected them onto full-length albums, but I confess I’ve not listened to their stuff in a long while. 

As this ASH20 event affirms, though, there are still plenty of people who were teenagers in the late 90s for whom Ash will always be cool older brothers (and sister). Legends. 

Sorry, everyone, but I’ve recently started a new employment thing, plus the European Championship is happening, so I haven’t had time to write about a band today. There’ll be regular service next week, though, and until then, here’s the anthem to end all anthems. 

In my post about Ikara Colt, I mentioned a genre called The Scene with No Name, which a) did, in fact, have a name, and b) it was a fucking stupid name. Well, today to (almost) match the inanity of that title, let me tell you about Skunk Rock. The Lo-Fidelity Allstars (also former Youth Groups subjects) were the biggest names within this scene, and that ought to tell you something about it. Other bands in the bracket included Campag Velocet (starring the world’s most handsome man), and London heartthrobs Regular Fries.

Now, usually when you hear about bands with journalists in them, you think “oh, this probably won’t be good”, and that’s what I first thought about the Fries. It didn’t help that the responsibilities of said writer, Paul Moody, were “synthesizer, vibes” according to an early press release. Their ‘Free The Regular Fries’ EP was meandering, but its follow up ‘Fries Entertainment’ showed some more promise. Sounding a little like the Lo-Fis but also like a bad hangover, they delivered a lot of promise, but within a thick layer of “don’t give a fuck”-ness. Which of course meant that they were as shambolic as they were sublime. 

Their live shows reflected this - there were grooves and beats and also camouflage netting and birdcages. The first time I saw them was that Lo-Fi Allstars I wrote about before, the one where their singer never showed up because he had in fact quit the band that very afternoon. We didn’t know this when the Fries went on, and they covered the stage with netting and camouflage gear. The singer spent a lot of time shaking a giant birdcage. One guy that wasn’t the singer yelled at the crowd for most of the show. They had promotional bank notes which rained over the crowd. ‘Dream Lottery’ began most of their live shows, and featured the drums fading in, and getting more and more psychedelic. There may have been a saxophone in there. It was a racket the kind of which you rarely find in nature, and though we mostly enjoyed it, plenty of people very adamantly did not. 

My friend Nico would later write these rules for attending a Regular Fries live show:  

When at a Regular Fries gig all individual(s) must be suitably off their Bill and Teds in one of the following way(s):

1. Take copious amounts of anything that sounds like a Japanese make of car.
2. If access to such things is denied because you are a) sad or b) have no f(r)iends, hit head against wall a lot.
3. If all else fails, pretend to be Pinocchio and do the Hamster Dance.

I always elected for option #3. 

They had a single called ‘King Kong’ which might have been a love song but it was about the notorious celluloid monster. In the summer of 1999 came the album ‘Accept the Signal’, which paired some pretty great songs - ‘King Kong’, ‘Dust It’, ‘Dream Lottery’ - with some truly horrific lyrics. “Deep sea diver, dear Lady Godiva, lend us a fiver… the girls” went ‘The Girls’.

Their calling card, though, was always the lumbering, stoned ‘Dust It’, which never gets out of second gear, but is still perfect for head nodding. 

In January 2000, they supported Asian Dub Foundation at the Astoria, and it was a severe mismatch between the bands, and I was one of the few who enjoyed both sets immensely. The drummer wore an Army helmet, and as well as favourites from ‘Signal’, they debuted a couple of new songs, including the more techno-influenced ‘Blown A Fuse’. It was fun to watch a roadie try to cut down all their netting to get the stage ready for ADF. Again, most people in the audience weren’t feeling it though. 

By the time album #2, ‘War on Plastic Plants’ came out, only a year after the debut, people had already moved on from Skunk Rock, and it went unnoticed. A shame, because somehow it was MORE mental than its predecessor. For one thing, there was a song called ‘Africa Take Me Back, which was incongruous coming from the whitest, palest men you will ever look at. Legit superstar producers Jagz Kooner and Dave Fridmann were brought in. ‘Eclipse’ is a song that’s even sort of sweet, even if the vocals sound like they’re being delivered by a man in a cave. With a cold. 

Best of all, there’s a track featuring their spiritual forefather Kool Keith, a man so nuts, he makes the Fries look like Dr. Stephen Hawking or something. And this was then remixed by James from the Manic Street Preachers! Nothing makes sense in the world of Regular Fries.

They drifted away after that, yet incredibly there exists a Best Of album which looks entirely unauthorized. 

My buddy Sal once wrote of the band, “they’re what you get if an Ikea Store crashes into Cape Canaveral with 8 joyous, energetically manic Bez type people including a legionnaire, thrown in.” That covers it pretty well, I feel.

Once again, Youth Groups’ dearest friend John Hart provides this tribute to a band that largely passed me by, but meant a great deal to him. Follow him on Twitter, won’t you? 

Kenickie, then. The indie Spice Girls, weren’t they? A giggly blur of Malibu and fake fur. Inconsequential, lightweight three chord teenage thrashing about snogging, shopping for mascara and Saturday nights in some place called “Sunderland”. Shampoo with guitars, right?

Everything you know about Kenickie is wrong.

I mean, for starters let’s just look at some of the cheerful lyrics to be found on debut album “At the Club”.

“Now her kisses - full at first - ache like blisters waiting to be burst. She is alone” (Millionaire Sweeper)

“I’m too young to feel so old” (In Your Car)

“The good Lord filled my veins up with silt from the river, that’s how my blood runs cold…. stretched my skin across a frame like canvas, that’s how my sense is numb…. drain my colour, leave me grey, there are too many moths around when I shine” (How I Was Made)

“I think that everyone looks better when they’re sad. It’s ok to be sad” (Brother John)

Well, that was profoundly depressing. And that’s before we get to “Robot Song”, which I’ve always taken to be about staying in an abusive relationship because you lack the self worth to leave. And that was their upbeat album.

*****

Let’s declare an interest: Kenickie are probably the most important thing to have ever happened to me.

Picture the scene: It’s 1998 and having set my heart on the London School of Economics, I’m just filling up my university application form with any old rubbish, and can afford to include the University of Durham, just because one of my favourite bands – Kenickie - appear as alumnus in the prospectus (drummer Johnny X was studying there at the time, while singer Lauren Laverne had deferred a place to be a pop star).

When it later transpired the London School of Economics did not have its heart set on me and I actually do have to go to Durham. Where I meet many important people in my life, including my wife and the mother of my child (who until reading this were unaware of each other’s existence), start an accidental career in words and for a time even live in this “Sunderland” place.

In fact, the decision to move to Sunderland at all was taken when X walked past me as I wandered around the city centre weighing up pros like “close to Newcastle” and cons like “not actually Newcastle”, inevitably interpreted by me as fate.

In a way which sounds quaint in 2012, I actually fell in love with Kenickie before I heard a note of their music, during in an interview in a magazine. Vox magazine! They were smart, they were irreverent, they were fearless, they were funny. They had more style, wit and verve than all the rest of the post-Britpop bloke rock landfill put together. They were kinda hot. It was love.

Between them - Laverne, guitarist Marie DuSantiago and bassist Emmy-Kate Montrose - they were a hilarious, unstoppable six-legged force of nature – which sadly it’s only really possible to showcase in this clip of them introducing the beyond-terrible video to the brilliant Motown-punk of Nightlife.

It was this charisma which gave the band a profile way in excess of their actual commercial success.

I mean, comedy show Smack the Pony even parodied their videos, which is a pretty odd thing to happen to a band whose biggest-selling single peaked at #24.

They were all over the place – every TV show, every radio show, every magazine, even the Daily Star, wanted them to come on and be riotously hilarious, and if they had to, even to play on of their songs. “We’ve got our gang, I know we’ll always be friends” roared “Come out 2nite” (which by the way amnesiac snobs, topped John Peel’s Festive Fifty in 1996) and Kenickie were the coolest gang in down. And you wanted to be in that gang.

It’s not to say this endearing silliness which made their name and defined their image is totally absent from the band’s actual music - “PVC IS MY FAVORUTIE PLASTIC! COS IT’S NICE AND SHINY! AND COMPLETELY WATERPROOF!” runs the chorus to ‘PVC’ while b-side ‘Drag Race’ namechecks Gordon the Gopher before concluding “Tim from Ash is foxy!” – it’s just often overshadowed everything else they had to offer.

Despite its curiously flat production, debut album “At the Club” has stood the rest of time pretty well. Songs like ‘Nightlife’, ‘In Your Car’ and ‘Punka’ - a magnificent two-fingered salute to the puritans who ostracized the band for daring to sign to a major label - were and remain absolute belters, melding pop hooks, girl group vocals, buzzsaw guitars and deceptively thoughtful lyrics to impressive effect, while reflective moments like ‘Acetone’ are undeniably affecting.

It went top 10. And most of them were still only 19. What could possibly go wrong?

*****

“Worst thing that could happen to us? We stop making records and hate each other” (Emmy-Kate Montrose, 1997)

“‘Oh Kenickie, the bargain bins, why were they never successful?’ - No one fucking says that about Mogwai or Arab Strap. We were only judged that way because we were girls. We had a Top Ten album, all our singles went in the charts, we recouped - but it was like, ‘You’re girls, you’re like the Honeyz’” (Lauren Laverne, 2000)

I’d love to know what happened next. Certainly Kenickie have never said.

“If I was a Kenickie fan I’d want to know what happened, but I just feel, well… fuck off, really. I’m not a Spice Girl; I don’t have to say anything I don’t want to” bristled Laverne uncharacteristically shortly afterwards.

Whatever it was, it was messy.

As a tour video at the time shows, the band were by this time a very long way from the indestructible unit of old. They’re at best exhausted, and at worst downright dysfunctional.

Between albums, DuSantiago moved to second guitar to allow X to come out from the drum kit and take over lead. He, not her, was now joint principle songwriter alongside Laverne. Doubtless as a consequence, second album “Get In” isn’t just different from its predecessor - to all intents and purposes, it’s the work of an entirely different band. On the plus side, its attempt to redefine the group as a sophisticated pop group in the vein of St Etienne or Stereolab is the sound of a group refusing to be pigeon-holed as the band you think they are, a concerted attempt to make Kenickie into something more than “those daft girls from up North”.

On the down side, it was commercial suicide.

If you’re going to be quite so drastic, you’re going to have to do something pretty bloody spectacular to avoid your fanbase just going “huh?” and giving their money instead of shite like Suede and Mansun, and to win over people who think “Kenickie, fuck off, they’re just those daft girls from up North”.

Which is exactly what happened.

As X himself said in the aftermath of the inevitable split, “If this was about selling records, ‘Get In’ would sound like ‘At The Club’, only more refined and with bigger choruses. Maybe then the people who like shite like Suede and Mansun would have bought it, as they did the first album”

This doesn’t mean that soungs like, “I Would Fix You” and “Weeknights” aren’t brilliant, because they are - in fact the former is probably one of the greatest things anyone has ever done with sound – with the weird disco of ‘Magnatron’ and the plaintive ‘Lunch at Lassiters’ not far behind. But regrettably, ‘Get In’ is not pretty bloody spectacular.

The album peaked at 32. Second single “Stay in the Sun” died a death. And that’s all folks. How often have we heard that around here?

*****

A decade or more on, Johnny X continues to do all sorts across the North East music scene working with the likes of Field Music and Frankie and the Heartstrings as both a musician and producer, albeit under his real name; Emmy-Kate Montrose is in academia, and Marie DuSantiago is quite high up in the arts. In a weird continuation of Kenickie’s bewildering impact on my life, our paths used to cross professionally on the odd occasion and in my most pathetic ever boast we’re even connected on LinkedIn.

I’m not sure what happened to the other one. I think she did a dance record about one of Arab Strap, but not a lot since.

Plenty of today’s songs have been added to the YG Spotify playlist, which you can enjoy here. Subscribe to it, if you’d like. Or don’t. No pressure. 

The last couple of entries in here have been focused on bands that I liked during the Youth Groups era but haven’t really paid much attention to in the decade since. I wanted to buck that trend, and today I’m writing about a band that I still straight-up love. The story of me and Arab Strap took place almost exclusively after I moved to the States, so they’re technically a post-Youth group, but it’s still going to be fun to talk about, and I make the rules so there. 

Before 2002, I was only vaguely aware of Aidan and Malcolm. Sure, I knew the Belle and Sebastian song that was named for them, and that they were on Chemikal Underground Records, but I’d only heard a couple of songs, over a couple of years, and they’d not really made much of an impression. I read that they were dour and lo-fi, and that didn’t sound like something I’d enjoy, so I left them alone. 

During my first semester as an American college student, my friends Lindsey, Rachael and I went on a road trip from Tallahassee to New Orleans, to see my beloved Delgados. It was the first time I was seeing the Glasgow four-piece, and I could not have been more excited about the little getaway. (Admittedly, I did not do any of the driving, fifteen hours in total, else I’d have been less enthused). I’ll write about that gig more in the future when I talk about The Delgados, but by sheer coincidence, their label mates and real life mates Arab Strap were playing in the bigger room downstairs, that same night. The Strap were supporting Bright Eyes on tour at the time, and came upstairs when they were done. I used to have a recording of the Delgados gig, and there’s a very audible “Gentlemen, good evening!” from Alun Woodward when they walked in. 

I knew a couple of the guys in the Delgados, so after their show, we stuck around and chatted, and I was introduced to Aidan and Malcolm. Their gig had gone horribly, and they were happy to laugh about it and drink. After that positive experience, I decided that I really ought to check them out again, and I’m glad I did. ‘The Shy Retirer’ was the first song on their fifth album, ‘Monday at the Hug and Pint’, and it hit me straight away. This wasn’t the band I’d previously dismissed as being too dour and lo-fi. Admittedly, the drum machine probably cost about a fiver, but listen to those sweeping strings! And the vocals weren’t obscure mumbles, but well-delivered. And the lyrics were poignant but funny. “You know I’m always moanin / But you jump-start my serotonin” was a favourite, and a regular away message of mine for a while. After seeing the video, with Aidan dancing and hula-hooping, I was hooked. 

Not long afterwards, I picked up ‘Monday at the Hug and Pint’. Firstly, I was amazed at how dour it wasn’t. Yes, every song is cripplingly sad and reading the lyrics will make you want to cry into your chips, but the arrangements and orchestrations are just so lush. And Aidan Moffat just sings the shit out of it. Listen to the way ‘Act Of War’ starts in the clouds and only goes up from there. 

Then there’s the bagpipes of ‘Loch Leven’, or the insistent bassline and menace of ‘Flirt’. ‘Serenade’ is imperial, as Moffat sings of “the kind of girl I want to bathe and dance with”. Or the way ‘Meanwhile, at the Bar, a Drunkard Muses…’ segues into ‘Fucking Little Bastards’, an incredible slab of feedback and rage. So so so great. 

I spent most of summer ‘03 listening to ‘Monday…’ and its companion live album ‘The Cunted Circus’. The two saddest albums for my first American summer. I also went back a little and gave their 1998 album ‘Philophobia’ a listen, and that opening four-song salvo is still incredible. The band has a nice habit of opening each album with a striking first lyric, and ‘Packs of Three’ succeeds for sure. (Click here for the lyrics, or watch the video below). The song unfolds slowly, building only slightly, but the melancholy is palpable from the very beginning. I wonder if the thick Glaswegian accent just makes everything sound more sad by default. 

The next song, though, is the one that will always leave me a blubbering mess. ‘Soaps’ begins so calmly, with a slow simple drum and some strummed guitar chords. “Where d’you go, when you go?” he asks. By the time the organ is in the party, and the vocals are at their most yearning, it’s devastating. 

The other one from ‘Philohobia’ that I really love is ‘New Birds’, which is just a spoken word story which escalates and the song descends into a very un-Strap-like noisy outro. Excellent stuff. 

In December, the band played my student union. It was incredibly convenient. I went down there early, and talked my way inside to say hello. Among their touring band was my pal Alan, who’d previously played with The Delgados. It was lovely to see him again, and I got to watch the band sound check. They played an incredible version of ‘Fucking Little Bastards’ - don’t forget, this had been one of my favourite songs over the past eight months or so - for an audience of just me and the sound guy. This is what it looked like. 

After that, I chatted a bit with Malcolm, who remembered me from New Orleans, and Aidan, who gave me a massive hug and was incredibly charming. After doors opened, Malcolm played a few songs from his solo album ‘5:14 Fluoxytine Seagull Alcohol John Nicotine’. I was mostly chatting with Alan at the merch table during this, but I remember the final song, ‘Devil and the Angel’, being particularly affecting, and ending with the lyric “your songs are all shite”.

Four songs into Arab Strap’s set, the venue’s fire alarm went off, and everyone had to go outside for a bit. “It must be lunch time” quipped Aidan. After ten minutes outside, they came back and continued as if nothing had happened. They did a wonderful low-key cover of ‘Why Can’t This Be Love’ by Van Halen. Everyone danced to ‘The Shy Retirer’. The strings on ‘Serenade’ were majestic. ‘Here We Go’ got a big cheer. I remember thinking “Who are all these Arab Strap fans in Tallahassee? How are they all not my best friends?” It was a great show, and afterwards I was happy to stick around and help at the merch table. I even bought this t-shirt, which as an adult, I never get to wear, but I got a lot of mileage out of it before graduating college. 

Charming, right? The drawing’s by Aidan. I’m very proud of this photo, too, of myself, Alan and Aidan. We’re rebels. 

In 2005, the band released what would end up being their final album, ‘The Last Romance’. The album wasn’t quite as immediate as ‘Monday’, but a few moments really stood out. (Also, check out the album’s opening lyric). ‘(If There’s) No Hope For Us’ was more uptempo than most Strap songs, an even had a bona fide chorus, as well as duelling female vocals. Very nice. 

And then there’s ‘There Is No Ending’. As upbeat a song as they’ll ever write. Brassy. Triumphant. Emphatic. The band didn’t break up for another year, but this serves as a perfect “Goodnight and Fuck You” from Britain’s saddest, yet most glorious, band. 

Since then, both members have done solo work. Malcolm’s put out a few albums, the best of which, ‘A Brighter Beat’, is absolutely tremendous. The single ‘We’re All Going To Die’ was an unlikely contender for Christmas Number One in 2007, but not surprisingly, didn’t quite make it. The album’s title track is even better. Most recently, he put out a mostly instrumental album under the name Human Don’t Be Angry. 

Mr. Moffat, meanwhile, formed Aidan Moffat and the Best-Ofs, and released an album in 2009 called ‘How To Get To Heaven From Scotland’. The single, ‘Big Blonde’, is charming, and has a fun video. 

Arab Strap, then. I don’t think they would’ve fit my tastes when I was 15, but they were the perfect musical accompaniment for my next stage of growing up. There is no ending. 

For a year or so, I used to sit next to a dude called Richard on the bus to and from school. He was into music too, and we’d often spend the 45 minute ride sharing earphones and listening to some new album. In January 1997, Richard said “I think I’m going to buy the new Reef album”. I was pretty excited, because (a) their single ‘Place Your Hands’ had been massive that previous autumn, and (b) Richard buying it meant that I could make a copy for myself. The week it came out, though, he said “I bought this other album instead” and I was horrified. What about Reef? What about me?! The other record was ‘Beautiful Freak’ by an American band I’d never heard of before called eels. I was very annoyed, but ended up enjoying that eels album all the same.

Reef had already put out one album at that stage, which had sort of passed me by. They were from the west country, and had achieved a small level of fame on the back of a song that was in a TV advert for MiniDiscs. (Kids, ask your weird, tech-savvy uncles). That song, ‘Naked’, hadn’t done a lot for me, though it was clear that Reef didn’t sound like most of their peers. Their brand of rock and roll was pretty heavily influenced by funk - crunchy guitars but with jammy basslines and irregular, scat-inspired vocals. They were not exactly Cast or Dodgy, but sounded more like a British Red Hot Chili Peppers, a band that I didn’t know at the time.

The song ‘Place Your Hands’ really made them famous, though. Built over a simple guitar riff, it was an instant anthem. It doesn’t hurt when the chorus is basically the phrase “Put your hands up” again and again. (I am aware that the lyric is actually “put your hands on”, but that doesn’t make a damn bit of sense). The single cracked the top ten, was absolutely ubiquitous, and was adapted for use on Chris Evans’ TFI Friday, a TV series that has been mentioned on Youth Groups surprisingly frequently.

In January of 1997, they followed it up with the equally great single ‘Come Back Brighter’, which also made the top ten singles chart. I don’t know what appealed to me so much about them. As I said before, I think it had to do with them being slightly out of touch with the rest of the burgeoning Britpop scene. These dudes had long hair, were surfers, sang loose songs that were meant for parties, weren’t London-centric.

Whatever they were doing was working. Despite Richard’s neglect, the band’s second album, ‘Glow’, went straight in at number one when it was released at the end of January ‘97, replacing the ‘Evita’ OST at the summit. I got the album from somewhere, and my abiding memory of it is my friend Robin - another passenger on the Oakwood coach - singing the song ‘Summer’s In Bloom’, trying to ape Gary Stringer’s unique voice. Listening to the song right now, again I’m struck by how much it doesn’t sound like everyone’s perception of Britpop. The vocals are bluesy, the bass is all the way up, the guitars are muddy. These were clearly guys who were influenced by more than just ‘The White Album’.

I remember that we got a good laugh of the song ‘Consideration’, which would be Reef’s third single. It’s a slow, tender, Motown-influenced ballad. Not bad in theory, right? But Stringer’s foghorn vocals were best suited to balls-out rockers, and his falsetto didn’t suit something this delicate. That said, I’m listening to it now, and it’s not bad at all. A gospel choir is joining Stringer and telling me “it’s gonna be alright”, and I’m swaying appreciatively. The single has aged a lot better than I recall it being.

The final single from the album was ‘Yer Old’, a more crowd pleasing stormer which was an obvious live favourite, and the way he sings “Loife” at the end of the song could not be more west country. I love it.

After that, my short-lived interest in Reef dropped off a bit. Their next album ‘Rides’ came and went, and didn’t make much of an impact. In fact, it’s the only one of their records whose album art isn’t on its Wikipedia page. The album charted at a very respectable number three, despite its lead single ‘I’ve Got Something To Say’ being another slow-ish one, whose video shows a white-suited Gary Stringer squatting on the bonnet of a car.

The internet has a lot to answer for. In 1998, I heard Straw’s debut single ‘Weird Superman’ on MTV2, thought it was great, and bought a promo copy in Camden. There was very little info to be found about them, so I thought, why not start a website for them? I knew a guy who’d done a similar thing for Mansun a few years earlier, and now that they were pretty big, his fansite was more popular than the band’s official one. So, based entirely on one single and a couple of b-sides, I started “World of Straw” - clever boy - which, in a good week, could attract upto fifteen hits. 

What was it about them that I liked at the time? It’s hard to say. ‘Weird Superman’ is an uptempo indie song. Almost fifteen years later, there’s really not a lot to it. I wonder if the reason I got SO into Straw, more so than anyone else, possibly on the planet, is that they were so obscure, and I wanted to champion a band that nobody else knew about. Never mind the fact that they were on a major label; even at 14, I had that dumb indie mentality of hitching up to this band in its infancy and hoping for the best. 

Of all the bands that’ve been covered in Youth Groups, Straw may well be the ones who I got over the quickest. I first heard them when I was 15, was in love with them at 16, and had moved on by 17. The band’s second single, ‘The Aeroplane Song’, was to be their only top 40 single, making #37 in February 1999. It had a catchy keyboard riff, a chorus that was led by the word “Lufthansa” and a charming music video. Even though the music press pretty unanimously decried Straw as being “corporate indie” and “terrible”, my fandom would not be abated. 

The first time I saw the band live was at London’s legendary venue, The 100 Club, a couple of weeks after ‘The Aeroplane Song’ came out. I was still young and naive, and assumed that nobody else had heard of the band, so didn’t bother to buy tickets in advance, and sure enough, it was sold out, and we had to buy them from a tout (scalper). My bad mood about that was soon turned around, just by watching the band’s crew set up the stage for them. Each band member had a neon sign that said ORGAN, GUITAR, DRUMS, SINGER, that lit up at showtime. I remember enjoying the gig a whole lot, though again, I was pretty heavily in love with the band at this time. 

Thanks to the website, I had been in fairly regular email correspondence with band member Duck, who played keyboards, and as luck would have it, I got to meet him for the first time that April. I recognized him at a Younger Younger 28s gig at the Improv Theatre, which is no longer around. I attended that gig, incidentally, with Stephen Eastwood, who wrote about music for Teletext. That is a sentence that, maybe five people will care about. Anyway, I think Straw and YY28s shared a manager or something, so Duck was there, and I went and said hello, and he was very nice and offered to buy me a drink. I was 16, and didn’t know anything about drinks. But I sure as shit didn’t want to look uncool, so I said “I’ll have whatever you’re having”, which turned out to be a Jack and Coke. And that, friends, is the story of my first alcoholic drink! 

The band’s next single was called ‘Moving To California’, and it’s all about getting dropped by your label, and not having the confidence to tell your mates that things aren’t going well. “I’m Moving to California, at least that’s what I’m telling my friends” goes the chorus. Prior to forming Straw, Mattie, Duck and Roger had been in a band that got dropped before releasing anything, so the song came from a personal place, and would prove to be incredibly prescient about the future too.  It holds up pretty well, better than most of the band’s songs. Nice guitar work. Strings on top of everything, as was customary at the time.

For their next single, the label flew the band to Miami to make a video. It’s a fun, upbeat, summery song, that was released just in time for the summer and was called ‘The Soundtrack Of The Summer’. See how that works? Gotta respect a major label single that uses the word “tampon” in its lyrics, though.

Can’t remember the exact chronology, but at some time in the spring or summer, the band’s debut album ‘Shoplifting’ came out to generally weak reviews. Of course, I dug it, but then I bought a promo copy a couple of weeks before release. It had an embossed cover! In addition to the singles, there were a couple of other songs that I immediately loved. ‘Wake Up (Miss Venezuela)’ took aim at beauty pageants, and often began the band’s live sets. ‘Anthem for the Low in Self Esteem’ was suitably upbeat and bouncy. ‘Dracula Has Risen From The Grave’ was okay. If my descriptions here seem a little sparse, it’s because I’ve not listened to the album in many years, and playing it now, I’m not exactly reinspired to write a lot about them. It’s generic, middle of the road indie, the kind that had already started to fall out of fashion by the time it was released. It has not aged well at all. 

In May, my friend Tom and I interviewed the band in their dressing room prior to a show at ULU in London. It was a daft, silly conversation, which was very fun to take part in, though very tough to transcribe afterwards. If anyone would like to read it, let me know. I still have it. The band offered us beer in the dressing rooms and we gladly accepted. They were a corrupting influence! The gig itself was a lot of fun again - in addition to their own songs, they ended the show with a cover of the Turtles’ ‘Happy Together’, which was equally upbeat and chipper. 

A month later, the band played The Other Stage at Glastonbury and did more of the same. It was a big deal for me, Tom, and a handful of others, but most people in the audience were waiting for whatever was coming next. I’m sure this was the biggest crowd that Straw ever played for, though. 

And then, after Glastonbury… DISASTER! Guitarist Roger Power left the band, and he emailed me to put an official statement on my website about it. There was nothing too controversial; he just wanted out, and Glastonbury was his last show. He always came off as more quiet and introverted than the other three dudes, so personality-wise it wasn’t a giant shock. But the fact that he had contacted ME to break the story felt huge. Again, I’m aware that only about eight people will have read it. And as I’ve said before, Straw weren’t getting any music press coverage anyway, so the “story” passed everyone else by. For me, it was akin to Guigsy and Bonehead getting kicked out of Oasis. 

Roger left and WEA dropped the band. Then, a long absence, broken by the so-so ‘Homework EP’. The lead track, ‘Watching You Sleep’ was pretty mediocre, even to me, though ‘Be Careful’ was pretty and suggested better things. 

The band recruited a new bass player called Dan, and returned as a four piece. I saw them for one last time at the Underworld in Camden, and they had a handful of new songs, which didn’t strike me as particularly exciting anymore. It was now the autumn of 2000, and I had discovered Rawkus Records, and Chemikal Underground, and Idlewild, and Straw’s brand of “five years too late” (NME) indie pop just didn’t cut it for me anymore. I gave the website to someone else to run, and sheepishly admitted that maybe this band wasn’t as amazing as I’d told everyone sixteen months earlier. 

They put out one more single, ‘Sailing off the Edge of the World’, but the second album never came out. Various snippets are all over YouTube, and it’s a pity they never had a second chance to show the world what they could do. 

Mattie Bennett is a media studies teacher now, apparently. It’s funny to watch these YouTube clips and see comments like “Go Mr B!” and things like that. Andy Nixon and Dan McKinna played with Crispian Mills (ex- of Kula Shaker) for a bit. Duck Blackwell produces now, and is probably doing some sort of insane chemistry experiments in a bus. 

Straw are the typical Youth Groups band: came and left quickly, I fell in and out of love with them quickly, and people forgot about them quickly.